Discovering the Rommel Murder

by Charles F. Marshall

  I think it is one of the most frightfully typical happenings in Germans'. I don't blame Rommel for it: I can imagine that he was tired of the whole thing and ill with his wounds. But his wife, his entourage!!! If I had been Mme. Rommel I would have raised such a fuss that these generals would have regretted that they ever saw a uniform. They wouldn't have got out of my house intact.

  Maybe ! wouldn 't have saved my husband that way, but I would have created the sort of scandal Hitler wished to avoid by poisoning Rommel and making a suicide out of it. I wouldn't have just stood by while my husband was being led out to slaughterlike a little lamb. Here you have all the German lack of political instinct, of individual fighting spirit that led them to their colossal self-destruction. What I say here goes of course only in the event that young Rommel and Frau Rommel's stories are true. But, frankly, I don't doubt them. Why should the' make up such a shameful stony?

  I must say that it has seemed to me worse than anything one heard about German indifference to the atrocities in the concentration camps. What can you expect of a people where the wife and son of a field marshal don't know a thing to do when Papa is being taken away. It's such a shameful, psychologically revealing end for •a great man (or a pseudo-great man)....

  I thank you again for your kindness in sending me Hesse's note.

  Sincerely,

  Rosie S. Waldeck

  The passionate feeling of Countess Waldeck that Rommel's family and entourage should not have let him die without a gun battle, and that at the least it would have created a great scandal, is understandable, but, in my opinion naive. Neither were the family and entourage deserving of her scorn. What the well-meaning lady did not take into account was the reality of the situation and facts of which she was not aware. As the generals were arriving to force Rommel to commit suicide, neighbors in the town were phoning the Rommels to tell them that squads of SS men with machine guns were staked around the house and grounds and on all roads leading out of Herrlingen.

  When the marshal received the news from Hitler's emissaries that he was to take his own life, he told this to his aide and to his son, both of whom suggested a gun battle. Rommel ruled this out. There was little ammunition in the house, he told them. It would mean, in addition to his own death, the death of his wife, his son, the aide, and a crippled soldier servant who was recovering from a wound. His decision demonstrated once again his talent for coolly, quickly, and realistically sizing up a situation.

  Had Rommel not acquiesced to his suicide, he would have been sentenced to public hanging after undergoing the formalities of a kangaroo court. His wife, son, sister, and brothers would have been seized and imprisoned. Taking such vengeance was standard procedure when generals fell afoul of Hitler, the punishment of families sometimes stretching down to cousins. In her revelation to Sergeant Greiner of how her husband had died, Mrs. Rommel had referred to the general who had surrendered Koenigsberg and to Marshal Paulus who had surrendered at Stalingrad, resulting in each case in the imprisonment of their families.

  Second, the national scandal the countess foresaw had there been a battle would not have materialized. To create a scandal there must be a way to spread information. Other than the townspeople, few would know the truth, for there was no free press, only a tightly muzzled one, and no free radio. The fertile minds in the Propaganda Ministry would have fabricated and circulated worldwide a story attributing the death of the Rommel family to a car accident, or to foreign agents having poisoned the family food, or to some other falsity. Germany was a fear-dominated military state, ruthlessly efficient, with a megalomaniacal leader, one of the smartest tyrants ever to hypnotize a people. Together with his cohorts he ruled with a malevolence rarely equalled in history. It should not be forgotten that during his rule 200,000 Germans who resisted were incarcerated in jails and concentration camps. How tightly the German people were manacled can be deduced from the fact that the attorney officially assigned to defend General Erich Hoeppner, a defendant in the trial of the anti-Hitler putsch, pled him guilty and requested the death penalty for his client, indicative of the degree of obeisance the regime had forced onto the judicial system.

  Any attempt to spread the Rommel scandal would have been nipped in the bud. Whisperers could only have spread the story at risk to their own lives.

  Events in Germany during the Nazi era cannot be understood unless one understands how little knowledge the populace has of the truth if there exists no free press and radio.

  FOR THE SOLDIER, HAVING BEEN JOUNCED AND BOUNCED ABOUT FOR several years in Army vehicles with stiff suspension systems, captured German Army civilian cars were highly prized trophies. Among occupying troops, particularly in small independent units such as mine, a certain competitiveness set in to see whocould live most comfortably. One-upmanship was widely practiced and I was not immune to the disease. Possession of such a car was a feather in one's cap, and my cap had two feathers, a BMW and a powerful, plush Horch, the type Rommel was in when he was strafed.

  As time went on so many of these Wehrmacht prizes began to appear with American officers at the wheel that the AMG outlawed them-though not, of course, for themselves-except for specially authorized personnel.

  While manufacture of the Horch ceased years ago, aficionados of old cars are sure to be familiar with it. Fit for a conquering Caesar, or at the minimum a field marshal, it was too conspicuous for a lowly captain at a time when prudence dictated that one not flaunt his illegal civilian chariot. Therefore when AMG first cracked down, I surrendered my Horch.

  The BMW, however, I wanted to keep. A tan midsize sporty vehicle, camouflaged in greens and browns, it had been confiscated from a German majortaken captive. Not able to legitimately register it, and loathe to surrender it, I kept the car inside the camp while I looked for a way to hang on to this jewel. One day, having business with AMG in town, I drove in a jeep to their offices just as the AMG colonel was parking his captured sedan. I made note of the AMG registration number painted on his vehicle and, returning to my camp, I had a couple prisoners paint the car black. Then I had them paint a large white star on the hood and sides in conformity with U.S. Army markings, and, to cap it off, had them paint the AMG colonel's registration number on it. "If that number is good enough for the colonel," I laughingly told my executive officer, "it's good enough for us."

  The captured BMW, after "Americanization," being readied for a skiing trip. Unlike the open jeep, the German car provided protection against the wintry weather and was favored for long trips. Photo by author.

  The "de-Nazified" BMW was especially appreciated during the winter months when some of my staff and I went on skiing weekends in the Alps. It gave us many a long, snug ride, despite occasional spasms of mechanical problems, and, I convinced myself, we deserved it. It also proved a godsend on the sometimes long drives I was forced to make from my camps in the weeks and months ahead to seek out people who would talk to me about Rommel.

  On the afternoon of New Year's Eve of 1946 I began the search for "the real Rommel" in earnest. I wanted to ascertain the facts while memories were still fresh. Getting behind the wheel of the BMW I drove to Laichingen to look for Dr. Kardler, the doctor who had signed Rommel's death certificate, only to find he had already left for his home in Westphalen, which was in the French zone. I had difficulties with the French noncom at the border, a scene that reminded me of a comic opera. The guard said he had found several discrepancies in my trip ticket, which to me was absurd. As commander of my own unit, I authorized myself to go wherever I chose. After a lengthy argument in my lamentable French, he finally capitulated and let me enter.

  When I arrived at the doctor's house, he was not at home, so, at the first opportunity, some days later, I looked him up at the hospital in Ulm. There, nervously chain-smoking cigarette after cigarette, he told me that he had been ordered by the two generals who had accompanied Rommel not to touch the body. There was to be no autopsy: "'Everything,' they told me, 'everything, has been arranged in Berl
in. Do not touch the body."'

  January 2 (my diary): My back is giving me a lot of trouble. / dragged myself to work today.

  January 3: / ought to go to the hospital ...

  January 4: Came back from work early and went to bed. Just can't put off the hospital any longer.

  January 5: To the 216th General Hospital in Stuttgart.

  My trip and admission to the hospital are still deeply etched in my memory.

  It was a bitter cold Saturday afternoon and snowing as one of my sergeants drove me in anopen jeep (the BMW was being repaired) from Ulm to Stuttgart on the autobahn, a distance of seventy-five or eighty miles. When we arrived at the hospital, I climbed the steps to the entrance in agonizing pain, bent over like the figure 7, only to be told by the sergeant on duty in the office, "Sony, sir, but the admitting officer is off for the weekend. You can't be admitted till Monday morning."

  I stared at the noncom in disbelief. There was no way that I was going to retrace the trip and all its attendant suffering. "Sergeant," I said through gritted teeth and with the steeliest look I could muster as I put my hand on my pistol, "You find me a bed!"

  Thinking I might really shoot him-and I might have, I was in such agony- he hurried down the hall, and in a few minutes came back with a nurse and a wheelchair. They found me a bed.

  My back problem fell into the category of those difficult to treat. Numerous x-rays were taken, usually preceded by enemas. Penicillin was administered every few hours by injection. Needless to say, I was not thrilled to be awakened at three in the morning to have my buttock punctured by a hypodermic needle.

  Nothing, including physiotherapeutic treatments of swirling hot water baths, helped much. When I entered the hospital I could not lie flat in bed. The headrest had to be almost upright. But each day the nurse cranked it down a bit and after a week I was again able to lie flat and to walk erect.

  Then one day I had an unexpected visitor, a Fraulein Dr. Kimmich. How I had first met her, I no longer recall, nor does my diary tell me, but when I learned that she had attained her doctorate at Tuebingen University, had many contacts there, and personally knew Professor Dr. Albrecht, Rommel's physician, I asked her to see if the man would grant me an interview. She now reported that not only had he consented to see me but was actually eager to talk to me. He would tell me the facts about Rommel's wounds and health problems and wished it to be widely publicized that they were not the cause of his death, but that his end had been the result of a dastardly murder.

  Not cured, but able to walk again, I wangled a weekend pass from the hospital and drove with Dr. Kimmich to visit Albrecht, a charming old gentleman in the easygoing Swabian tradition. In a wide-ranging three-hour talk he answered the long list of questions I had prepared and graphically explained the marshal's wounds. He had suffered a severe fracture of the base of the skull. For some days liquid from the brain seeped through the left nostril. In addition he had suffered two breaks of the temple, an injury to the left eye, and splinter cuts in the head and face, as well as a concussion.

  Reaching into a filing cabinet, the doctor pulled out Rommel's x-ray plates. In addition to shell fragments in his head, they showed the multiple fractures of his skull as well as his cheekbones and temples. White translucent ink lines traced the fractures, which were clearly visible even to my layman's eye.

  "Did the marshal ever refer to military matters?" I asked.

  "Oh, yes," said Albrecht. "He was especially bitter that his advice on the disposition of the troops defending the coast was not taken. He said that he had repeatedly emphasized to the High Command that all reserves and supplies had to be positioned at the coast, so as to pit the utmost force against the enemy while he was still on the water. Once the assault on the beaches had begun, Allied air power would prevent the movement of reinforcements. And that, he said, is exactly what happened."

  "I have gathered from other people," I said, that he did not hold a high opinion of Hitler."

  For a few moments the doctor twirled a pencil between the fingers of his two hands and looked out the window. Turning back to me, he said, "Captain, you have put it mildly, very mildly. To me Rommel said, several times, This man is a pathological liar. He is a madman who will sacrifice the last German before he meets his own end."'

  Rommel's physician, Professor Dr. Albrecht of Tuebingen University, to whom the Marshal confided that "Hitler is a madman who will sacrifice the last German before he meets his own end." Photo by author during intenviewr in January 1946.

  During my talk with Albrecht, Dr. Kimmich acted as my note taker, as she was to do on other occasions. She was also helpful to me from time to time in translating technical terms and was in sympathy with my obsession to learn the truth about Rommel. The Beachhead News revelation of Hitler's murder of the marshal had been spread worldwide and had also become known to the Germans. Sunday I spent straightening matters at the camp, and I returned to the hospital Monday morning.

  At the end of the second week I was in fairly good shape and released from the hospital. On the way home I stopped to see a major, whose name I've forgotten but who Dr. Kimmich happened to know was a close friend of Rommel. He proved helpful, confirming some information, denying or correcting other data, and providing some insights into the man.

  Arriving at the camp I found we were screening the last of the internees. Upon notifying army headquarters I was told that my next assignment would be to supervise interrogation at the largest of the Seventh Army PW camps, this one known as Disarmed Enemy Forces Enclosure #10 and located in Heilbronn, a city thirty-five miles north of Stuttgart and eighty-five miles northwest of Ulm.

  January 21: Drove to Heilbronn. The camp I'm scheduled to take over is a terrible mess-about 10,000 men, most/v over forty- frve and many sick-an outdoor tent affair with intolerably poor accommodations, and this in midwinter.

  We found nothing suitable in the way of houses forour own living quarters.

  There had been tremendous destruction in Heilbronn, which had held out for a week in April 1945 under intense bombing and artillery fire. Citizens told us the dead were so many that they were laid side by side in rows for blocks in the main street, and the survivors walked along the rows searching for family members, friends, and relatives. So many people were buried in the ruins, they said, that the city had a noticeable stench all during the summer of 1945.

  January 25: Moved to Heilbronn, a very very badly destroved city. Took over two houses, one for the officers and one for the noncoms.

  Colonel Williams, G-2 of Seventh Army, came to visit me at the Camp, and we discussed the mess for two hours. He told me he was very surprised not to find me crying on his shoulders, but instead optimistic.

  Entrance and guard post at Disarmed Enemy Forces Enclosure #10, an outdoor tent complex situated in ankle-deep mud. It offered only meager mid-winter accommodations for its 10,000 prisoners, most of whom were over forty-five years old and many of whom were ill.

  Persuaded the engineers to give top priority to the barracks building that is to house my offices and to place it where I want it. They start building in the morning.

  Met the Camp commander, Colonel Versace, and his executive, Major Bale. Seem OK.

  By "seem OK," I meant that in our first discussions I developed the impression that they would be amenable to my suggestions on how to set up and run the camp. They had no previous experience in this area and seemed to welcome my input. While the interrogation offices were under construction, I took the opportunity to report back to the hospital for more treatment, as the doctors wanted.

  On my way home I stopped at Internment Camp 78 at Zuffenhausen, where Hauptmann Hermann Aldinger was being detained. He had been Rommel's Ordonnanzoffizier, acombination of aide, private secretary, personal assistant and, in Rommel's case, confidant. A wiry Swabian of about forty-five, friendly and communicative, he was a landscape architect in civilian life and a friend of Rommel since the First World War when both had been in the same battalion.


  Top: Scene of typical destruction in Heilbronn. Such damage sometimes made difficult the search for adequate quarters for the interrogation staff, which needed a large house such as the one it had occupied earlier at Heidenheim, bottom. Photos by author.

  Told that I had been the one who had written the story of the marshal's death as revealed to us by Mrs. Rommel, he affirmed it in every detail. "Eine schreckliche unglaubliche Geschichte, ein Schicksal unverdient," he concluded emotionally. ("A terrible unbelievable story, a fate undeserved.")

  When he had regained control of his emotions, I asked, "After a day at the front in Africa, how did Rommel relax in the evening at headquarters? Did he listen to music? Did he read a book? Did he engage in gabfests with his staff? Did he play cards?"

  "None of that," said Aldinger. "He and I would have dinner in his van. That consisted of the same rations the troops were eating. It was highlighted by one glass of wine and took all of twenty minutes. This would be followed by listening to radio newscasts, writing his nightly letter to his wife, and then the perusal of official papers till bedtime."

  In the course of our lengthy talk I asked him how Rommel would explain his success on the battlefield.